Why Most US Adults Still Read Print Magazines

magazinepileDigital magazine audiences may be growing, but most U.S. adults still read print magazines…with good reason.

While consumption of digital magazine content continues to grow, readership levels for print magazines are not declining accordingly.

“According to a new survey by Mequoda, the ‘American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook,’ 70 percent of adults in the U.S. read a print magazine in the last 30 days, and 51 percent read at least two,” writes Greg Dool in Folio:

“In what may come as something of a surprise,” Dool continues, “those figures are almost completely flat compared to the same study last year, in which 70 percent of respondents also reported having read a print magazine in the past month.”

What does this mean for publishers? One thing the study points out is the value of the print readers to a brand’s bottom line.

“The multiplatform consumer is typically older and more affluent than the digital-only consumer,” Dool notes. And while they may be more likely to pay for digital content too, only 24% of multi-channel readers said they spent anything at all on digital content.

Maybe it has something to with the growing sense of being servants to our technology; your print magazine will never lose a charge or drop a Wi-Fi signal. It probably also has a lot to do with the tactile nature of the printed piece, and the importance of curation that digital can’t deliver. Clearly, there are many reasons that consumers continue to prefer magazine content in print, and marketers are increasingly realizing their power to engage.

This latest study puts some real numbers around the concepts, further proof that print magazines continue to engage in spite of the popularity of digital devices.